Rosary and the Family

Then, in what I think is the climax of this whole Marian Age and in her rosary call to the modern world, the Blessed Mother invites us to the full fifteen decade Rosary on August 14, 1984: "I ask people to pray with me these days. Pray all the more... Say every day at least one Rosary: Joyful, Sorrowful, and Glorious Mysteries." There's a certain appropriateness ahout going through the full Rosary each day (now twenty decades). We all have joyful, luminous, sorrowful, and glorious moments in each day. And the more we can unite our experiences with the joy and the sorrow and the glory of Christ, the more we are transformed into Him. I think this is especially important with the Sorrowful Mysteries. The more we can see our sufferings in light of the Cross, and not only the epitome of his suffering on the Cross, but also the progress of His suffering— from the agony in the garden, to the scourging, to the crowning of the thorns, and so on, the more we can accept our daily Calvary. St. Augustine has said there is no better way to grow in the spiritual life than to meditate daily on the Passion of Jesus Christ. Pondering the Passion of Jesus is also a standard foundation of the spirituality of St. Teresa of Avila, the Doctor of the Church on prayer.

Because the Christian has to maintain a spiritual balance, we notice there are three sets of mysteries that have to do with joy and happiness, and one with sorrow, for the Christian also must realize that it's a dying and resurrected Christ that we worship and follow. Therefore, we must meditate on both the sorrowful and glorious events of Christ's life.

In our own age, with so much reason for discouragement, we have to remember we are on the winning team. Christ the King will return victoriously. Mary's Immaculate Heart will triumph, Our Lady says at Fatima. Sometimes in our own examination of the events around us, we lose the element of hope, and that's not appropriate for the Christian to lose sight of. We know that the Lord has resurrected and that if we remain loyal to Him, we, too, will ultimately experience the final resurrection of the body on the last day. The last two Glorious Mysteries give us a little indication of what happens to us when we are true to the first eighteen mysteries: our own final resurrection of the body and our own winning of the heavenly crown. That's the beauty of praying the twenty decades of the Rosary on a daily basis. It does help us with the rhythm of our own day to unite all daily experiences whether joyful, luminous, sorrowful, or glorious with those same Gospel experiences of Our Lord and our Spiritual Mother.

What, then, do we have in this Marian Era in terms of the recommendation of the Rosary by Our Lady? Lourdes by example, Fatima explicitly, and ultimately the very clear call of Medjugorje for the fifteen decade Rosary. There's no mistaking what the Blessed Mother is calling for. Like a good, persistent Jewish mother who's concerned about her children, she's not going to stop when it is so important for our spiritual lives! A mother could stop if it were just for herself, but a mother can't stop when it's for the good of her children. That's why the Blessed Mother continues this crucial Rosary call even to our very day—for the sake of us, her children.

History of the Rosary

What is the Rosary, and historically where do we get this profound prayer? Let me discuss this briefly, because I think the old Thomistic maxim pertains that the more we know the truth, the more our heart desires the good. The more we understand the richness of the Rosary in its origins and nature, the more we are disposed to praying the Rosary. So, let's take a brief glance into its history.

Traditionally, we trace the Rosary, in the form we know today, back to the twelfth century to the person of St. Dominic. Historically, it is not clear exactly what was given by the Blessed Mother to St. Dominic, but there remains an appropriate connection with Dominic and meditation on the Gospel mysteries (a connection referred to in several magisterial documents pertaining to the Rosary).

What is known is that St. Dominic was called on to preach against the Albigensian heresy. One of the major tenets of the Albigensian heresy was that matter is evil. St. Dominic went into the midst of the Albigensian heresy preaching the essential mysteries of Christ in the Gospel, which by their nature, are incarnational. In other words, they are physical and material. Dominic preached that God became man, so Christ inseparably united himself with matter. And He lived with matter—it's called a human nature. And He died on the Cross with a body, and He resurrected bodily. So we can't consider matter to be evil and hold the tenets of the Faith. As Dominic preached very strongly against Albigensianism, he stressed the humanity of Christ as a means of revealing His divinity. So Dominic encouraged the people, especially during parish preaching, to meditate on the fundamental mysteries of Christ in the Gospel. And in some form this is the result of a revelation by the Blessed Mother to Dominic directing him to emphasize meditations on the Gospel life of Jesus Christ.

After the initial revelation of the Blessed Virgin to St. Dominic, we have a period of historical development from the twelfth to the sixteenth century in the structure of the Rosary. The Rosary started as what was called the "Layman's Psalter" where the laity recited one hundred and fifty "Pater Nosters" (Our Fathers) which modeled the one hundred and fifty Psalms in the Psalter that the monks prayed. Gradually, the one hundred and fifty Hail Marys were substituted for Our Fathers, and fifteen Our Fathers were placed to break up these one hundred and fifty Hail Marys into fifteen sets, which we often call the decades. So we have Our Father, followed by ten Hail Marys.

We also started with anywhere from fifty to one hundred and fifty mysteries per fifteen decade Rosary in the thirteenth and fourteenth century, in some cases having a mystery for each Hail Mary. Gradually and for a rather practical reason (because people grew tired of carrying around the books necessary for recounting all the mysteries), the number was reduced from as many as one hundred and fifty down to fifteen. And so, the "Layman's Psalter," in the beginning of the fifteen century, began to be called "Our Lady's Psalter."

In 1569, Pope St. Pius V, the great Pope of the Rosary, a Dominican Pope, officially approved the modern prayer usage and form, which is the fifteen mysteries, the Our Father, the ten Hail Marys, and the addition of the Glory Be at the end of each decade. Also, by the sixteenth century, the second part of the Hail Mary was added. Previously in the thirteenth century when St. Thomas Aquinas did a commentary on the Hail Mary, there was only the first part concluding with the word "Jesus." The second part of the Hail Mary, an ecclesial prayer to the Mother of God for us sinners at the most important times, now, and at the hour of death, was added by the time the final papal approval was granted in 1569.

Finally, in his Apostolic Letter (Rosarium Virginis Mariae), Pope John Paul II added the five Luminous Mysteries to the Rosary on October 16, 2002, bringing the total number of mysteries in the Rosary to twenty.

We see historically then that the Rosary comes to us as a combination of grace and nature, beginning with a revelation from the Blessed Mother and then developing as it was prayed in the living Church.

Nature of the Rosary

What is the nature of the Rosary? The Rosary is a beautiful blend of vocal prayer and meditation centering on the greatest mysteries in the life of Our Lord Jesus and secondarily on the life of His Mother that leads us to incorporate these mysteries into our own lives. It is again an incarnational prayer. In other words, it's a prayer that incorporates both body and soul, and that's the value of the beads. Back in the days of the "Layman's Psalter" in the fourteenth century, they gave the laity beads so they could count their one hundred and fifty prayers. There is an important physical part (and St. Louis de Montfort stressed this in his discussion on the Rosary) in using the beads because the beads keep "matter at the disposition of the spirit." The beads keep the body concentrated on the subject that the soul is pondering. That's the purpose of the beads, to physically include the body in the prayer of the soul. The physical concreteness of the prayer helps with spiritual concentration.

Let me treat the nature of the Rosary under three aspects: the Rosary is a) scriptural, b) Christ-centered, and c) meditational.

Scriptural

The Rosary is essentially a scriptural prayer, and this is true not only in terms of the mysteries but also in terms of the prayers themselves. Pope Paul VI called the Rosary a "compendium of the Gospel." Why? Because the Rosary is the greatest summary of the most important elements of the life of Jesus and in the faith of the Church. It's a compendium, it's a history, it's a theological summary of the principal events in the life of Jesus Christ. We start with the Annunciation, the beginning of New Testament salvation history. When Our Lady said "yes" to the angel Gabriel, then the God-man came to be. And from the Annunciation we ponder Christ's life through the mysteries recorded in Scripture of the joyful, luminous, sorrowful, and glorious events up to the last Glorious Mystery of Our Lady's Coronation referred to in Revelation 12 with the Woman crowned with twelve stars. So the mysteries of meditation provide a profound, yet succinct summary of the most important points contained in the written Word of God.

Not only is each mystery scriptural, but the prayers of the Rosary are also essentially scriptural. The Our Father clearly enough is a revealed scriptural prayer of Our Lord. The first part of the Hail Mary is the combination of two scriptural responses from the Gospel of St. Luke. The first is the response of the angel Gabriel: "Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with you." Note in Scripture that the angel does not say "Hail Mary;" rather he uses the title "full of grace" as the name for Our Lady. No other creature could ever be called "full of grace." The Saints have excelled in grace, but only the woman who's been immaculately conceived possesses the plenitude of grace. So, "Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with you" speaks of Our Lady's very nature in her Immaculate Conception. Then we have the greeting of Elizabeth: "Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb."

I once had a student who said, "I just can't get myself to pray the first part of the Hail Mary, I just don't feel comfortable, I can't get the words out." I asked the student, "Have you ever read the first chapter of the Gospel of Luke?" "Oh yeah, I'm always reading Scripture" was the response. "Well, then you've done it," I retorted, "you've prayed the first part of the Hail Mary." It's a unity of those two scriptural greetings to the Mother of Jesus from the archangel Gabriel and St. Elizabeth. The only non-scriptural aspect of the first part of the Hail Mary is the addition of the word "Jesus." But certainly this addition would not be a great difficulty for the Christian.

The second part of the Hail Mary is an ecclesial prayer of the Church which says, "Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners." When I was a youngster in CCD classes, almost all of us ill-formed kids used to pray incorrectly, "Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for our sinners," you know those people who sin, we should pray for them. No, fundamental to the prayer is that we are praying for ourselves as sinners. It's a prayer for us who need this Mother so much and need the grace of her Son so much. It's the humble prayer of a sinner. If you're not a sinner, you don't want to pray the Hail Mary because you don't need the Divine Physician. When you think you don't need the Divine Physician, then you need Him most of all because you have lost the fundamental sense of sin.

The Rosary is consequently a prayer of the sinner for grace both now, to incorporate daily the process of conversion on our present spiritual journey of faith, and at the hour of our death, when we make the final decision where we shall spend the rest of eternity, which is the destiny of every immortal soul. Both these aspects of the Hail Mary reflect scriptural truths. So, I think it can be said plainly and with great confidence that the entire Hail Mary is a scriptural prayer, in the sense of reflecting scriptural words and the scriptural principles.

We then have the Glory Be in the Rosary prayer which is the Trinitarian prayer of praise. The prayer reflects the angels' praise of the Trinity, because the utmost responsibility of the angels is to praise God. That's why we do our guardian angel a great favor by making Eucharistic visits, for then he can do what's true to his nature and to his vocation at the same time—he can adore God and he can also watch after us!

The Rosary Is Christ-Centered

Secondly, the Rosary is a Christ-centered prayer. Both prayers and meditations alike are centered on the life of Jesus Christ. Again, eighteen of the twenty mysteries are explicitly dedicated to the life of Christ. As for the last two mysteries, the Assumption and the Coronation, the former, Our Lady's bodily Assumption into Heaven, is the obvious effect of her Immaculate Conception. We remember that corruption of the body is an effect of sin. If we don't have original sin, we don't have corruption of the body. So, of course, at the end of her earthly life Our Lady would be assumed body and soul into Heaven. And this in some sense awaits us in the fact that after the final judgement, we have the resurrection of the body on the last day.